


I, Cypher

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Community: areyougame, Gen, Trans Male Character, Transgender, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-25 00:38:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wanted nothing more than to be a knight of the Order. </p><p>Prompt: Warhammer 40k, Lion/Luther: unrequited longing - “Dark Angel, with thine aching lust / To rid the world of penitence”<br/>Actually: Cypher trans!fic. Enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I, Cypher

**Author's Note:**

> I've yet to actually finish _Descent of Angels_ or _Fallen Angels_ , but this is well off in made-up-alternate-character-interpretation land anyway.

My father was a knight of the Order. He was not a very good knight, but he was the only one I knew and I wanted to be just like him, which explains much of what came after.

That is redundant, of course. Brothers of the Order were forbidden from taking wives or fathering children, so that my father had my mother and four offspring tucked away in a small village tells of his character already. Yet, if any oath was frequently broken, it was that one, and he took responsibility for my mother as if she were his wife rather than abandon her like a whore. To other men, his courage in battle in the forests made up for his shortages of various virtues.

As a child, I hated my father. For sure I wanted his approval and to imitate him, but if asked I would have denounced him as a cruel tyrant.

As an adult, I am more understanding of my parents and embarrassed of my younger self, as many are in hindsight. My mother was frequently exasperated by my wilfulness and rebellion and was inclined to tell me to ask my father’s permission next he visited for things she didn’t want me to do, to delay me and make him forbid me instead of her. At the time I took everything my father said as an insult and injustice against me personally, but in truth all he ever told me was the truth about how the world worked and he indulged me greatly.

I wanted nothing more than to be a knight of the Order. I fought with my younger brother with sticks from the time he was old enough to stand on two legs. We threw rocks everywhere for ‘target practice’. When we were older, my brother got a dagger for his naming-day and I begged our father for one too until he finally gave in. We fought and ran and climbed trees all the time, ignoring our mother’s attempts to get us to do chores or watch our baby sisters. The only chores I relished were those that took me near the forest surrounding our little village, and I foolishly went as deep inside as I could as often as I could. The forests were the life of Caliban, but they were also its death.

I had no real concept of this. I had dreams that life would be different if I were somewhere else. We were distant from the closest keep of the Order, where my father lived, and from our feudal lord. I knew everyone in my village and as a result personally believed every one of them was against me, though their disapproval of me was mild and not worse than plenty of other lazy and disobedient children got. I dreamed that I would be the greatest knight ever and slay a great beast myself and everyone would see how wrong they’d been about me. I would overcome everything and protect everyone.

My father was quite pleased by the thought that my brother should become a knight of the Order too, if perhaps at a different keep, for one didn’t flaunt one’s illicit bastards so openly. He told more stories than he should have and I drank them in. On the other hand, I grew to resent my brother. I was the elder by two years. I was stronger, faster, smarter, and he just followed my lead in our games. I wanted our father to tell me I should go as a supplicant.

‘Morgan,’ my father told me patiently. My father was originally from the distant sea-cost and called me ‘Morgan’ after the fashion of his people, though my mother had named me Moriah. ‘You may not see such a difference between a boy and a girl now, but someday you will be a woman. You cannot change what nature has made you. I promise to see you well dowered when you are grown.’

Nothing could have incensed me more. Even the most innocent mention of the fact I was a girl could send me into a rage, and I became even more obsessed with showing everyone, someday. I would do anything. I would dress as a boy and no one would ever have to know.

My father would laugh and shake his head and say he would check the faces of the new knight-supplicants carefully.

From this, I came to the conclusion that if I tried to join the Order, I would eventually be found out and exposed by my father, if not by someone else. That I might fail by fault of my own other than my sex never crossed my mind. In response, I decided that any chivalric order would do. I just wanted to be a knight, anywhere.

Even saying that, there was more traffic between the knightly orders in those days than there had been in the past. This was after the coming of the Lion and the world was becoming smaller.

The plan I hatched was that I would journey to the far north, where the Knights of Lupus had sequestered themselves in defiance of the Great Hunt el’Jonson had proposed. I would be long gone before anyone even found me missing and no one would sent much of a search party after me once it became clear how far I’d gone into the forest. I had no horse, so I would go on foot. I had good clothes and boots. I had a knife and I would take the old pistol, primitive even by the standards of Caliban at the time, that my mother let moulder around the house in lieu of my dowry. So I started out my journey with theft and lies, fittingly considering.

All I can say now was that I was nine years old and thought myself immortal. Danger was something that happened only in tales, not anything I was any good at identifying in my real life. My stubbornness was ever my strongest trait, leading me to see through the many bad plans I have come up with over my lifetime.

How I made it, I cannot say. I can only attribute it to luck and the fact that I travelled much of the way a quarter of a day behind a band of knights from the Order on the way to one of their northern holds. They dealt with the more dangerous beasts, while I followed just far enough behind to not be noticed. I did not look like enough of a meal to be worth the effort, that was more likely.

The Watchers in the Dark I saw sometimes and they aided me many times, I do believe, but of them I will not speak.

I had an inflated opinion of my forestry skills and they were small compared to those an adult or knight would have, but I had been a peasant child and knew a fair amount about what could and could not be eaten, how to find water, and what to do if I got lost, and whatnot. I did not live well, but I did eat enough to live without anything else eating me in turn.

In all my life on Caliban, I never feared the forest. This was never sensible, for its dangers were many and real, but I had no more control over my lack of fear than any man might have over the existence of his fears. Many other things frightened me, but never the forest.

The initiation tests of any knightly order are difficult and nine boys in ten fail. I clung to the fire of my determination in my heart. I would never give up after coming this far. It was unthinkable. My trials might be difficult and I might be less than any real boy, but I would endure. My body might betray me, but I would never surrender in my heart and I would see how far that would take to overcoming my frailties. My soul would not be conquered, so I would conquer all.

I was accepted as a knight-supplicant. The Knights of Lupus were starved for supplicants in those days, so even a scrawny little thing like me of such uncertain origins was taken. I told them my father was noble-born and from the coast and my name was Morgan (which was both a girl’s and a boy’s name there), and that was the closest to the truth I ever told them about just about anything. All but a handful of bright-eyed boys had gone elsewhere, for el’Jonson was a hero in those days and everyone wanted to fight under his banner, this last holdout aside. I had no interest in politics. I only cared that the lack of novices gave me more privacy than I could have expected in better times.

I worked hard, let it be said. I had a drive beyond the passion of my fellow supplicants. I was convinced of my own inadequacy compared to the boys and terrified that I would be found out and cast out in shame. I worked myself to the bone. I slept lightly and rose before anyone else to scrub when I wouldn’t be interrupted. I did exercises to strengthen my arms and shoulders every moment I had, because my father had always told me a woman’s arms would never be as strong as a man’s when explaining why I could never be a knight. I became a perfectionist hyperaware of every failure and practiced constantly in the hopes of somehow doing everything right.

The Knights of Lupus were a scholarly order as well as a combat one and I enjoyed that side of my training greatly and excelled at it. My mother had two books, gifts from my father, both about the Order and I had read them over and over long after I’d memorised them. Our village hadn’t even had its own printing press. In the much larger libraries my order boasted, I was often torn between my desire to read for pleasure or to spend more time in the practice courts until my aim was dead on, my swings and blocks perfect. I usually chose the latter back then, but I would return to my passion for scholarship as an adult.

Over the years, I became a woman as well, to my chagrin. My mother had explained to me what it would be like, but I didn’t have to like it. I bound my growing breasts with bandages and a tight jerkin under my shirt. I stuffed a sock down my loincloth. My paranoia spiked once a month that someone would see or smell the blood, and I somehow managed to purposefully get a minor cut on a hand or lower arm during that time. I was terribly afraid of being injured anywhere else and practiced blocking and dodging more and more. Luckily for me, my people still had some understanding of power armour, if of a primitive sort by Imperial standards.

When I was fourteen years of age, it was my time to become a squire to a more experienced knight. The Knights of Lupus did not elevate supplicants to full knights before eight years of training were up, though many other less prestigious orders were less stringent, I was taught. I was not considered to have a great deal of natural talent compared to some, but my dedicated had been noted.

A number of full knights offered to take me on as a squire, and I surprised many by choosing to serve under Toviel. Toviel was known for being jocular and boisterous, utterly unlike the reputation for being morose and anti-social that I had certainly earned. I had no close friends, rarely spoke unprompted, and was a deeply self-obsessed workaholic. I chose him solely because of his rather unflattering reputation for being so completely oblivious that a beast could pounce on him before he noticed it. He seemed the person in the whole order least likely to discover my secret. That he could also fight his way out of the predicaments his inattention got him into was a bonus.

I enjoyed the years of my fieldwork and was happier than I had been before. Measuring myself against beasts in the forest, I found myself less wanting than I had believed. All my hard work was paying off.

My worries about being found out were never entirely gone, though. I knew part of the initiation ritual of my order involved at least partial stripping for a ritual bath, but I kept telling myself I’d figure out a way around that when the time came. As it drew closer, I began to despair. If only I could have an excuse to be so heavily bandaged no one would notice anything else, was the best I could come up with.

My knight-master often kept company with a number of other veterans when there was company to be had, and I spent my time with other newly-made knights and squire-supplicants. There was much discussion about the Order and Lion el’Jonson in the south, but there had been such talk for as long as I remembered and I thought nothing of it. I had grown up hearing about how much better Caliban would be once the Lion and Luther killed all the great beasts, so I didn’t really agree with the political stance of the Knights of Lupus. I didn’t care and didn’t think I had to. They would honour their treaties and stay out of our land. I only cared about answering calls for help from the local villages and avenging them on marauding beasts.

One night, Adiel was telling a long story of a beast he had fought with some other men recently and took enough of a break from the recounting of his own glory to mention the terrible injuries some of the other knights and villagers had taken. ‘His chest was ripped open and I could see his lungs, but the old medicine woman saved him and all the others. Some of them were missing limbs or had had whole chunks taken out, but she sewed them all back up.’

I asked for details about where in the area this old woman lived, and learned that she lived alone in the forest far from safety, so strong was she in magic. The Watchers in the Dark danced in rings around her cabin every night and she could cure any wound or illness, the villagers said.

The next morning I told my knight-master that the wound I’d taken the day before was infected and I had heard there was a healing woman in the area. He laughed and told me he had thought all my insistence it was just a scratch was only me putting up a brave face and to remember disease and infection killed twice as many men as were ever killed right-off and granted me permission to go.

Walking into that cabin was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Harder than leaving home, harder than being accepted as a supplicant. I nearly convinced myself to turn my horse aside and go back, that I had no idea what I ever wanted to ask of her, that I could never form the words aloud to explain my problem. My stubbornness reared its head though and I set my chin and stammered at the sharp-tongued old woman until I’d thoroughly made a fool of myself.

Old Mother Yael was quite possibly the best surgeon on Caliban I still believe now that I know more of medicine from the Imperials. Once she had ascertained my problem, she hatched a plan for a full mastectomy and hysterectomy, procedures she had never done before, and successfully carried them out.

I spent the next two months lying flat on my back, covered in bandages, maggots, and honey, as I recovered. She sent a message from the nearest village that I had been attacked by a beast on my way and would need time to recover from my injuries. My entire torso was now crisscrossed with scars, most of them shallow ones I had asked her to add after to obscure the surgical incisions. This would not turn me into a man, but I was pleased with myself and my new ability to not have to wear a shirt.

Those with any knowledge of Caliban’s history will be able to guess the sight that met me when I sought to return to the Knights of Lupus, still weak from my surgeries and forced-idleness. They had been wiped out in a war with the Order and its allies, and knights still combed the north looking for the last few survivors.

I turned from the still smoking ruins. I returned to Old Yael’s cabin only to tell her the news. She gave me a basket of supplies, but did not try to stop a young fool like me from messing up her hard work by leading my horse deeper into the forest.

I wanted to die. I should have died too. A knight without an order, this was not a thing we understood on Caliban in that time. That I had lived was because of my own selfishness. I should have been there.

I resolved to fight until I died, my own eternal crusade. Yet, the forests were not as dangerous as they once had been, even in the north. I had a good horse, good armour, a good chainsword and bolt pistol by the standards of Caliban. I was well-trained, an uninitiated novice only by formality. Suicide was a foreign concept to me. A knight fought and eventually died, but always he fought the beasts. So I lingered for much longer than I’d have liked.

I was often weak or hurt in those days, often sick or delirious, but I still did not die. My aim was true. I saw the Watchers often, but of course they did not speak to me even in my delusions.

I entered larger towns sometimes, to barter smaller beasts I’d killed for feed for my destrier, and bread, cheese, and salt for myself. I did not enjoy these trips. I felt a certain pride in knowing I was protecting these people like a knight should, but it was disconcerting to be reminded that life went on for some people when mine did not. It was distressing to leave my solitude.

Yael had given me a dress when she saw me off, fully aware of the irony I’m sure. It fit badly and I had to pad the front with leaves, but I had to wear it around people. A male stranger with military bearings was under a great deal of suspicion as a potential survivor of the Knights of Lupus. No true knight would ever stoop to disguising himself as a woman to escape detection, so I could not be a knight. I was a lying liar and an honourless craven anyway, who had been cursed by fate since birth, so it didn’t matter to me.

For all that I had been born a woman, I was not very good at acting like one. I had no experience, having been only a young girl long before, never an adult woman. My feet became tangled in my skirts when my stride was too wide. My arms swung too freely. I had to cover my hair with a cloth for lack of anything else to do with it. The dress fit badly and I had no idea how to alter it. Perhaps fortunately, the only sort of woman a lone stranger like me could pass for was a prostitute or a madwoman, which explained much inappropriate behaviour in respectable people’s eyes.

Eyes passed over me. I was truly less afraid of meeting knights of the Order while among people, for I would simply say I had no idea what they were talking about and I could always strip off my skirts to prove I was indeed a woman. A woman could have scars from once being mauled by a beast too.

I paid little attention to them. I wished I’d died in the war, with the men I’d known half my life, but I held little grudge against the Order. I knew both sides and favoured the Order’s cause and had heard they had been attacked first by foolish firebrands from the Knights of Lupus, though that may or may not have been true.

I grew to hate the very idea of war, that man should fight man and good men should die on both sides for bad reasons. Knights were for hunting beasts and protecting the weak from the forest and the night. This had never been entirely true in the history of Caliban’s politics, but it was the ideal I had been raised and trained to believe in. I offer this not as an excuse, but as some explanation for what was to come.

There was one man who noticed the odd behaviour from a fallen woman, and that man followed me. He followed me for many days through the forest, watching, I think because he wanted to see into my very soul. I never noticed he was there as I continued my thankless task, as I tracked the biggest beasts I could find trails or rumours of. I took meticulous care of my horse and gear, but fought without regard for myself. I got up from my bed of leaves every morning, even when my lack of will to live was heavy and stifling around my shoulders like a blanket.

He appeared to me one day, between blinking my eyes and opening them again. I was checking over a beast I had killed to be absolutely sure it was dead, sword still dripping and my injuries paining me. It had almost gotten me back there, when it had me pinned against that rock, but I’d fought and fought until I’d gotten my arms up and my pistol free.

I had never met him before, but I could not mistake him. Lion el’Jonson was a giant of a man, with beautiful, sculpted features and a mane of blond hair.

‘You’re the last of the Knights of Lupus, aren’t you?’ he asked me.

My life had been lies, lies, lies, but I never lied to him and I will not be foresworn even now. ‘I don’t know. There may be others somewhere.’

‘My men have found no more trails of knights that still live. Only yours remains.’

‘Have you come to kill me?’ My voice was flat. I had no desire to point my blade at him. Even if I’d believed I had a chance of winning, I didn’t want to kill a fellow knight, and least of all this one who had done so much for the sake of Caliban.

‘Do you want me to?’

‘I would rather die a knight’s death, in the jaws of a beast. I wish no man to be turned into a beast for my sake.’

‘Why did things have to be this way then?’

‘I don’t know. Some men believe in things not just enough to die for them but to kill for them. I only became a knight because of my own selfish desires. I never understood chivalry or altruism before, not really. Now I understand better the sort of person I was when I only sought glory and recognition. If this gives me more insight into the entirety of the human condition, I have not exercised it yet.’

‘You still hunt the forests. I’ve seen.’

‘I have only the means I once used with no ends. Don’t worry. I’ll die soon enough and the Order’s honour will be restored.’

‘Live,’ he ordered me, a sudden, quick word. I felt his primarch’s charisma inscribe that word upon my soul. ‘No one else should die. For the future that is coming, I’ll need every good knight. Don’t throw your life away. Men are not meant to be alone. Join the Order and live with purpose.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Why not? It’s obvious you harbour no hatred for us on principle. Who you were before died in this forest, as many men do, and you were reborn here, as I was. Say you were trained at a small northern fortress, no need to tell which one.’

‘I’m only an unnatural woman! I could never be a true knight.’

I looked into his eyes and saw confusion and pity there. And something else. Kinship. Deep in the forest, the Lion made a decision right then about what the future had in store for me.

‘You kept that secret all these years? Excellent. I’ve been trying to decide who should be the next Lord Cypher of the Order. My brothers take for granted that I will follow tradition and seniority in my choice, but I cannot let myself be shackled with a hidebound reactionary when change is what we need. I require someone who will do what needs done, even if it’s not what is familiar.’

‘Are you crazy? I’m the worst person on Caliban for that position. I’m a liar and a cheat and a selfish coward. I wasn’t even trained by the Order. I don’t know it’s traditions and secrets.’ I had heard of the position only in passing in my childhood.

‘You’ll learn,’ he asserted as if it were already decided.

‘Why are you doing this? You know what an unnatural creature I am.’

The Lion lowered his great head and confided in me. He was not a man given to such things, but he was always bold and decisive when he’d decided to do something. ‘Everyday I think I am the most unnatural of men, so unlike all others. Everyday I lament this aching lust every time I look upon the man I love above all others.’

Such things were not spoken of on Caliban in those days. We of the chivalric orders were forbidden to marry or father children according to our ancient traditions, but everyone consorted with women, even those who were more conservative in following other traditions, lest they be accused of not desiring them. Even I had gone to brothels, though I used the old ‘pay extra for discretion and bring a book’ trick.

What could I say to this legend before me? That I had never realised before that he was human too, but now I saw it all too clearly? That I pitied him? That all the same I saw why so many followed him, and I would be loyal to him and him alone from now on, that I would live on because he had told me to? ‘I’ll keep your secrets. All of them.’

He returned with me to the Order, introducing me as a knight from one of the northern fortresses. There was resistance to his decision in my appointment and quite a bit of suspicion about who I was, but the Lord Cypher was supposed to be a figure shrouded in mystery. My father had died years before and there was no knight by my brother’s name in the annals of the Order.

Luther accepted me at the Lion’s recommendation, which was what mattered most. I was a late addition to their circle, but fit into the position Lion had given me like it had always been waiting for me. What he saw in me, why he elevated me above men he had known and fought with for years and took me into his confidence, I would never know. I was only grateful. I grew quickly in knowledge of the Order and in seeing into the hearts of men. My drive was even stronger than it had been in childhood when I had fought only for myself. Having friends, caring about people other than myself, it scared me but made my feelings so strong. For the Lion. For Caliban. I would be worthy.

I saw the looks the Lion gave Luther when he was not looking, and those Luther cast upon him behind his back, but I kept their secrets. Too well, perhaps.

The Emperor came not long after that, to sweep away all that had come before. I was numbered among those too old to undergo the transformation into a full Astartes. In truth, I was on the older end of the range but wouldn’t have been the eldest to undergo the procedure. The Lion asked the Emperor himself it would be possible for me, but I was told my biohelices were such that I never could.

I laughed and told Lion that he was misjudging my age anyway since I didn’t need to shave. I didn’t mind so much. Most of the full knights of the Order were too old as well. I was old enough and confident enough in my new position to not be so insecure. Had I not spent my whole life proving I could overcome my natural deficiencies? Luther I began to count as a friend during that time as we quietly bonded behind the Lion’s back, while he was busy with this new father of his from the stars. Luther first put a plasma pistol in my hand, to compliment the Imperial bolt pistol Lion had given me.

Imperial medical technology was a marvel to me all the same. A single foreign Apothecary who was assigned to overseeing such enhancements as I was still getting helped me with my other condition as well. There were more surgeries and hormones, until I looked like a man in truth. My body would no longer betray me.

Fate, though, fate always betrayed me. The Imperials said we should not speak of fate or the Watchers in the Dark or the night-whisperers, but I knew all these things to be true. Fate alone is not something to blame for the acts of men, though. What was to come after, it was because of what men chose. Beasts move at the whims of fate, but men make choices.

My choices. The Lion’s choices. Luther’s choices. The world changed too fast and we all lost sight of what was most important to us. All led us down a road we never wanted to go. This is the power of the Chaos: to weave the lives of its followers so that the fabric thus created has a pattern none of them intend.

Now that all is dust and ashes, I will keep my last charge, that of the sword at my side. Those who sleep undying deep beneath the shattered ground shall awaken once more. I will see them again, my beloved friends. Stubbornness is not a trait I have lost, even with the whispers of Chaos in my ear and its power running through my body. Such things never go away, once one is fallen.

I am the lone knight once more. I urge on men to make war against men, that which would should be taboo to us above all else. This time at least, I seek not death but to accomplish my mission. Lion ordered me to live, after all, and I will not be forsworn to him, though all else is lies.


End file.
